Call the Demolition Workers! Call the Midwife plot could see convent knocked down

Bosses have been told that developers want to start work on converting St Joseph’s College in London into flats

Call the Midwife bosses plan to deal with the loss of their film set by writing a dramatic story on the demolition of the show’s convent.

The old seminary that portrays the BBC’s Nonnatus House is to become flats.

BBC chiefs and executives at Neal Street Productions, which makes the hit drama, have been told that developers want to start work on converting St Joseph’s College in Mill Hill into flats.

They were faced with the prospect of having to recreate the sprawling gothic estate elsewhere – including the chapel, kitchen and antenatal clinc.

But instead they have written into the script the possibility of Nonnatus House being pulled down – paving the way for the nuns and nurses to move to new accomodation for the third series if necessary.

One senior show insider revealed: “We’ve written a potential demolition into the plot so that if we have to leave, the nuns and nurses will get a new home for the next run.

“It would be far simpler, and less costly, than trying to recreate the whole thing somewhere else.”

BBC

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However, sources on the show believe that the new owners, Barclay Group, are seeking further planning permission to develop the seven acres of Green Belt land around the former college for priests, which could put the building work on hold.

The material from the books by Worth, who died before the project made it to the screen, has now been exhausted.

Producer Hugh Warren stressed that a third series would have plenty of new material to draw from.

“We’ve now met lots of other midwives from that era – there’s a network in place and everybody’s got stories.”

In real life Nonnatus House, in Whitechapel, closed after 99 years of serving the public in 1978 and was later pulled down.